on sunday morning, i woke up at 6am and drove an hour to the long beach flea market. i'd never been before. outdoor markets, while fun and somewhat overwhelming, are also one of the places where i feel most rooted, weirdly. my maternal grandmother and mom both loved looking at old things, and when i'm sifting through vintage silverware or considering old glassware, i feel an anchor drop into my family history.
i had been talking to one of my internet friends the night before, asking for pointers. is entry cash only, how early do people who are "serious" about acquiring old things get there, that kind of stuff. after i returned home in the afternoon, he asked me if i had made it to the market. when i said that i had, he told me that he thought he saw me but he wasn't sure, so he didn't say hello.
i forgot how strange that feeling is. to know that you had been seen or watched, without being aware of that watching, and then being told about it after the fact. i wondered what i was doing as he was considering whether or not he should say hello—shielding my eyes from the sun, examining a citrus juicer, or, more embarrassingly, looking lost or down at my phone.
what does it mean to be seen? toward the end of january, i deleted the instagram app from my phone and then, a few days later, deactivated my account. for a long time, i've maintained a stance that instagram was a way for me to keep a photographic record of my life. i've never been great at maintaining any sort of continuity with an icloud photo library, so the last decade of my life feels most robustly represented on this strange app.
i had gotten to the point where i was constantly second-guessing myself, and as a result, becoming much more self-critical. a year ago i turned off all of my app notifications so that i wouldn't be prompted to look at my phone. but now i was just robotically picking it up and navigating to where i knew the app was located, regardless of what i was doing—in the middle of a book chapter, waiting for water to boil, when i woke up in the morning.
at the beginning of the pandemic, instagram still felt like somewhat of an uplifting force. i could read dispatches from friends across the country or down the street, donate to causes i care about, learn about virtual events. last month, i read a review for a book about twitter, and it cleared a lot of the fluffy, nostalgic feelings i had. i realized that, maybe, what i liked about instagram was the fact that it allowed me to feel witnessed. even worse, i was willing to spend a large portion of my day chasing that feeling.
after a few weeks of thinking about this, i still haven't found a long-term solution. what i do know, is that i've discovered other things that make me feel seen—and not just in a literal sense. to me, feeling seen is a fast track to feeling alive. when it's 75 degrees on a weekend in february and i spend all day reading outside; receiving an email, from a person in the executive administration at work, complimenting my writing; discovering a street i've never seen in a town i've lived in nearly all my life; eating a meal with my neighbors.
i can only hope that i'll become more attuned to these feelings. i want to remember what it feels like to end my day working from home while the sun is still up and read on my front stoop until it sets. the shimmering feeling of savoring honeyed light.
right now, i'm reading coming to my senses: the making of a counterculture cook by alice waters, the founder of the famous chez panisse, a restaurant in berkeley, california. early in the book, she talks about her great aunt, who collected glass bottles of every color, displaying them on shelves above her kitchen sink so the light would shine through them as she did the dishes after a midday meal. the importance of being able to recognize and appreciate displays of beauty, no matter how small, seems to frame waters's life and work. to get this point across, she asks, "what do you want to look at while you're washing the dishes?"
i'm still looking for my answer. what’s yours?
tiny morsels
BOOKS: recently read this charming autobiography in which i learned that steve martin’s first jobs were at disneyland and knott’s berry farm. also, read a little life in a week in early february and will never stop recommending it.
MUSIC: this will be a record of the year for me. a perfect movie score. i’m a sucker for a slide guitar.
MOVIES: really loved this comedy special, binged euphoria and experienced a wave of nebulous feelings, and this movie made me feel like i was on drugs.
INTERNET: this interview really brings out the magic of the movies and i had no idea that a cancer diagnosis was at the center of haim’s “summer girl.” this is how you should always make beans.
I loved reading your thoughts on social media, as it’s something I’ve also been thinking about and struggling with a lot recently. I can’t seem to find a balance between quitting altogether but feeling left out or letting it consume enough of my life to constitute a part-time job. I don’t know if there’s any true answer.